


Fact

by Maiden_of_the_Moon



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Episode Related, Fluff, M/M, Questioning, episode 33
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_the_Moon/pseuds/Maiden_of_the_Moon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cassettes leave everyone with questions. Cecil calls the one person who always has answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fact

**Disclaimer:** Nope.

 **Author's Note:** Just a little something to commemorate episode 33.

 **Warnings:** Cecilos fluff. Written late and edited early.

  
**XXX**

**Fact**

**XXX**

" _What am I?_ "

The question trips over phone wires that don't exist, stray syllables swallowed by roaming bubbles of static and consonants wandering off like messenger children somewhere between his mouth and your ear. Missing sounds, to match missing answers. A hollow silence. And that silence leaves gaps, and those gaps become fissures, and those fissures fray into cracks as wide as Radon Canyon. The terrain of his voice is altered in the wake of it; what has always been deep and dark is now unfamiliarly so, like a pit compared to the Void. It has become something empty, something endless. As if a carpet of black velvet and vowels has been torn straight down the middle, revealing an obsidian abyss beneath your feet. And now you are falling—the both of you, head-over-heels and tumbling—through Uncertainty and Terror, your only modicum of comfort the fact that these feelings are familiar after a year in this hellish Wonderland.

Well. Familiar to _you_ , anyway. But it's possible that, maybe, the Cheshire Cat has been smiling here for so long, he's forgotten how rough the rabbit hole can be.

" _What_ am _I?_ " he asks again, half-choked by anguish, and even now the sound leaves you queasy. It is a sentiment that he shares, if the plastic squeak of cracking wheels and the ribbon whisper of tangling cellophane is anything to judge by. " _My name was on a tablet. I was_ chosen _… A sacrifice? To—to who? To_ what _? To radio? To…? If I don't remember—if I am not who I was—if I am not… not me…_ "

There are so many things you want to say. So many things you _could_ say, if you could only find the courage. The heart. _Puberty is hard on all of us_ , you might quip, trying for a laugh. Or, more reassuringly, _I can barely remember 90% of the things I did and said as a teenager._ Or, perhaps, with gentle force _, None of us are who we were as kids._

But that isn't what he needs to hear, right now. Platitudes he can craft on his own. Reassurances are his trade. Facts, however… Facts, cold and hard and horrifying, are your specialty. Facts are how you earn your paychecks. Facts are what people turn to you for. And the fact of the matter is, based on what the town heard today—well. His call is not without merit. And so here you are, miles and minutes apart, but breathing into each other's ears with an intimate desperation usually reserved for the hours of midnight.

He swallows thickly. You place your spatula, gingerly, in the sink.

" _Carlos_ ," he whispers, one last time, your heart breaking along with your name on his lips, " _What am I?_ "

There are so many things you want to say. So many things you _could_ say, if you could only find the courage. So many hypotheses, assumptions, and theories you might share. But they are all unconfirmed, untested, based solely on circumstantial evidence. And he, as so many before him, has come to you for facts.

There is only one fact.

"You're my boyfriend."

  
**XXX**   


**Author's Note:**

> Please come Huddle with Us on [tumblr](http://singacrossthemoon.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
